Are wealth and status worth the price–when the price is your own daughter?
Utopia Texas opens in 1945 Caracas, Venezuela, where an oil well burns out of control. After years of separation, the fire serves to reunite Brock Fitzgibbons with his tenacious sister, Brya Harrison.
All that matters to Brya is to drill successful wells and maintain a perfect family image. Over time, Brock tries to be her voice of reason, but ruinous events occur.
Cole Harrison, Brya’s husband, leaves for the Reparation’s Committee to Japan. It’s rumored he’s cavorting with geishas.
At an annual ball given on their estate, Legacy, Brya’s daughter, Olivia, falls prey to a friend, Daisy, who almost drowns in their lagoon. After Brya severely reprimands Olivia for a crime she didn’t commit, Cole decides to take the family to his ranch in Utopia, Texas. To Brya’s shock and dismay, a gun is the only thing that makes the young girl smile.
Terrified of handguns, Brya introduces Olivia to the Christian Science religion, but vengeance reigns.Her daughter retreats into the darkness of her room, cutting up family pictures, and placing disembodied heads on the mirror with fruit stickers from Dole.
In order to distract Olivia from her precarious solitude and her now obsession with religion, Brya introduces her to tennis and Tony, the club pro.
At Olivia’s eighteenth birthday party, Brock senses there is something terribly wrong with his niece.
Brya begins to lose control when Olivia and Tony’s relationship heats up off the court and a pregnancy ensues. In order to preserve the family name, Brya orchestrates a backroom deal designed to get rid of the pro for good.
Olivia gives birth to a daughter, Maggie Merrill. The child’s innocence faces growing up under a secret reign of terror in an isolated cottage, with a grandmother who treats them both equally and refuses to take sides.
Plez, the family chauffeur, witnesses the brutal truth, and during a family meeting, exposes the atrocities being performed on the little girl.
A noted psychiatrist, Dr. Ober, confirms to Brya that Olivia is a paranoid schizophrenic and requires treatment.
Brya sends Maggie away to boarding school so she can deal with the monster living in the cottage.
After years of drinking and poor eating habits, Cole dies of a heart attack on the ranch.
Brya insists that Maggie be presented to society at the Houston Debutante Ball.Soon, thereafter, she dies of cancer and leaves Maggie in charge of her mother and of selling the estate.
The last evening on the property a crazed Olivia attacks Maggie, causing a candle to ignite a curtain in the master bedroom.Olivia’s burned alive. Brock, who had grown close to his niece over the years, rushes in and pulls her out of the flames to safety.
Betty Byrd 